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An anonymous reader writes "A biotech start-up from Massachusetts has an unusual product: a bottle full of bacteria you're supposed to spray onto your face. The bacteria is Nitrosomonas eutropha, and it's generally harmless. Its main use is that it oxidizes ammonia, and the start-up's researchers suspect it used to commonly live on human skin before we began washing it away with soaps and other cleaners. Such bacteria are an area of heavy research in biology right now. Scientists know that the gut microbiome is important to proper digestion, and they're trying to figure out if an external microbiome can be similarly beneficial to skin. A journalist for the NY Times volunteered to test the product, which involved four straight weeks of no showers, no soap, no shampoo, and no deodorant. The sprayed-on bacteria quickly colonized her skin, along with other known types of bacteria — and hundreds of unknown (but apparently harmless) strains. She reported improvements to her skin and complexion, and described how the bacteria worked to curtail (but not eliminate) the body odor caused by not washing. At the end of the experiment, all of the N. eutropha vanished within three showers."

I've done this. I was working with a pair of raw denim jeans, and the advice is to not wash it until you've worn them for 6 months.

The first month is the worst, but after that, they stop smelling like anything at all. As long as you're not doing deep lunges in the summer sun while you're going commando, it's probably fine. Actually, even that might be fine.

Those jeans have gone their whole lives with only two full washes and that's it. They still look good and like I said, they don't smell like anything at

they don't smell like anything at all, even when you put your face up to them to test them

They probably don't smell to you. People become desensitized to odors after they have been exposed to them regularly (which is probably fortunate for those working in some areas of sewage treatment plants).

In the early days, Steve Jobs was sure that he didn't have body odor and didn't need to shower because his diet cleansed him. Some of his co-workers reported disagreed with him on that point.

I have an objective sense of smell, honest. I've had jeans that stunk. I've had these jeans smell bad. But after a while, the smell is gone. I have a partner and I work in mixed company, and I KNOW someone would've mentioned it if they were terrible. (My partner is honest; some of the people I work with are reasonably tactless.) I've been caught out at a restaurant unexpectedly in jeans that I was embarrassed to be wearing because they smelled terrible.

But the article wasn't specifically about not showering. Yes, that was part of it, but the main thing was the application to the skin of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria on a regular basis. It is not as if people just stopped showering. We all know how that turns out. But that's not what this is about.

Most people have known this for some time. I haven't washed my face in years. It was the only thing that stopped acne. By "not wash", I mean don't use soap or cleaners. Obviously, some shampoo trickles down on it and I rinse with water each day.

Hair can be handled the same way if you have naturally dry or frizzy hair.

The introduction of conditioner is what allowed the practice of daily shampooing to become common. I can still remember the Clairol Herbal Essence commercial jingle from the late sixties / early seventies:

"You can wash your hair, now, every night, every night...",

Myself, I stopped shampooing daily in the eighties. I rarely shampoo more than once per month, just rinse it with water during my daily shower. My (long) hair stays clean enough, looks healthy, and is easier to manage. If you're not using shampoo, you'll have no need of conditioner, (except when you do shampoo).

I take a step somewhere in-between: I shower every 3-4 days, depending on how dirty I feel. Even then, I only wash my body with water, no soaps or cleansers or anything like that, though I do use some basic shampoo and conditioner on my hair. If I take showers more often my skin immediately starts to feel a lot drier and flakier. I dunno if my experiences match anyone else's, but it seems to suit my body quite fine.

I have also found the same thing. I use a good moisturizer but I just stopped using anything stronger than water on my face on a daily basis. (Unless I've got on makeup or sunscreen, then it gets a really mild soap.) I still have the occasional zit sneak through - stupid demodex bugs cannot be completely eliminated - but my active acne is gone.

For me, cutting back on sugar was the breakthrough. No more soft drinks or sugar candies. Altoids, Starburst, and Skittles are 99% sugar with a little flavoring. I still like all those junk foods, but I stay away. Tried dried and sugared mangoes, but still too much. Don't eat anything that's more than 1/3 sugar, and seldom eat things that are between 1/4 and 1/3 sugar. That includes quite a few brands and varieties of supposedly healthy granola bars. Some of those granola bars are worse than candy ba

This is why I hated that lame study years ago that claimed diet has no effect on acne. That's bullshit. It certainly does, and even common sense would dictate that you are what you eat.
In the event of this study, it sounds like an excuse for smelly hippies to justify not bathing but once a month. BO is the new beautiful! There was (or is) a big trend in Hollywood for this, from Brad Pitt to Joann whatshername (Mica) on Warehouse13. She's cute but there was one season where her hair looked just stringy, na

It's the other way around for me. I break out if I don't wash my face at least daily.

Same here. I have seborrheic dermatitis. There are various things that can be done to control the condition, but the easiest way is to simply wash my face each morning with dandruff shampoo. If I skip a day though, I immediately start to get scaling skin (primarily on the cheeks right under the eyes, and on the upper lip). Once it starts it takes 4 or 5 days to get it back under control. If I go a day without showering my hair also becomes greasy enough that it starts to give me headaches.

Scientists know that the gut microbiome is important to proper digestion

Gut bacteria is more than proper digestion, it's a second mind.It's interesting as well that one of the most important parts of a cell are the mitochondria, which by all rights are their own separate critter that set up a successful house in just about everything alive.

A 4 week test on something related to skin and they used a female journalist? Could by chance her skin complexion improved because of her menstrual cycle? There's about a 75% chance that she wasn't coming off of her period right before application so of course she probably noticed improvements to her skin, especially her face, over a 4 week test.

Ah - something men may not know, that isn't common knowledge, but is a thing. Many women who take BC pills are going for 6-8 week stretches at a time per cycle now. So you cannot assume a woman is on the standard four week cycle (with or without the pills, everyone is different) unless she says so.

I've seen the same with vegetarians. They'll have a cookout and then claim "I served all veggie burgers and no one even noticed!!!!". More likely, you just don't have a room full of guests who are going to take a bite, throw the burger on the floor, and scream "WHAT THE FUCK IS IN THIS NASTY BASTARD!?!?!". No, people generally just nod and put on a smile.

Same with things like this. You can smell pretty darned bad before people are going to start co

Baking soda is a base, and as such converts oils into soaps on contact - my first guess would be that it's converting some of the more aromatic oils on your skin. I've heard of it used to clear up enlarged pores as well - the combination of mild abrasion and high PH do a number on the sebum (waxy oils) that otherwise build up in your pores. PH cold definitely also have an effect on your surface microbes though.

Much of body odor comes from short-chain fatty acids, produced when various bacteria break down skin oils. Baking soda turns those acids into salts, which don't smell nearly as much. However, it can also saponify your skin oils, so it's hard on your skin if you use too much.

Where are the control groups? Shouldn't there also be at least a few of these:1) One group that showers daily and uses the spray.2) One group that showers daily and sprays plain water.3) One group that doesn't shower for 4 weeks and sprays plain water.

Number 3 is almost required for any accurate study and I would think it wouldthe other 2 wouldn't hurt either.

Where are the control groups? Shouldn't there also be at least a few of these:
1) One group that showers daily and uses the spray.
2) One group that showers daily and sprays plain water.
3) One group that doesn't shower for 4 weeks and sprays plain water.

Number 3 is almost required for any accurate study and I would think it would
the other 2 wouldn't hurt either.

Reading the article, she was subject 26 of who knows how many. For all we know, she was in the control group, or there may have been separate control groups present. The article recaps her personal experience, not the complete conditions for the experiment. Maybe with the initial findings, they'll do multiple rounds with different variables as you suggest above.

Where are the control groups? Shouldn't there also be at least a few of these:

Perhaps I missed this, but it doesn't seem that TFA is reporting official results of a study -- it's just the anecdotal description of somebody who participated in a study that's been going on. All she says is: "I was Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic." I don't think there's anything in TFA that mentions what control groups there may have been, nor does it imply that there were not any.

This is just one subject's experience that she decided to blog about... so should we really be questioning the validity of the study or its design when she doesn't even discuss methodology (and perhaps doesn't even know the details, since she was... you know... a PARTICIPANT in the study)?

About the only thing in TFA that suggests anything about research design is this:

A regime of concentrated AO+ caused a hundredfold decrease of Propionibacterium acnes, often blamed for acne breakouts. And the company says that diabetic mice with skin wounds heal more quickly after two weeks of treatment with a formulation of AOB.

Soon, AOBiome will file an Investigational New Drug Application with the F.D.A. to request permission to test more concentrated forms of AOB for the treatment of diabetic ulcers and other dermatologic conditions. "Itâ(TM)s very, very easy to make a quack therapy; to put together a bunch of biological links to convince someone that somethingâ(TM)s true," Heywood said. "What would hurt us is trying to sell anything ahead of the data."

"A hundredfold decrease," "wounds heal more quickly" -- these imply that there are comparison groups. And if they are applying to do testing with the FDA, they're going to have to do control groups.

Seriously -- what is it with Slashdot and the "But didn't they think of doing a real science experiment, with, you know, data and stuff" comments? This is a link to a blog post by subject in a study. You want details? Wait until an actual study comes out.

But if this company is planning on getting its stuff approved as a medical treatment or marketing it on its particular benefits, it would actually be incredibly counterproductive to design poor experiments, since they wouldn't allow them to refine or further develop their products.

More likely they're trying to sell something. A few years ago there were these balls you could throw into your laundry that cleaned your clothes without detergent. Reusable! They de-ionized the water! They didn't really work, but water will get your clothes clean in a lot of cases.

Same thing here, they're probably not idiots, but they might be looking for idiots.

The idea here is probiotics, good bacteria outbreed and exclude the pathogens... The article even states that the byproducts of the ammonia processing by these bacteria produced nirites and nitric acid which inhibited staph growth, they even noticed reduced healing times for mice.

With some notable exceptions. Yogurt, for example, has been shown to cause an increase in GABA sensors in the brains of mice. Disconnecting the gut neural ganglia from the rest of the body prevents this from happening, as does sterilizing the yogurt. Thus we know there's two mechanisms here: probiotic interaction with the gut, and gut interaction with the brain.

With that knowledge, we explain the association in humans between intake of yogurt and reduced stress. There's a gap--we haven't damaged the

I do understand how anti-biotics work. The most commonly prescribed anti-biotics are broad spectrums like amoxicillin due to it being able to affect many bacteria and most diagnoses of conditions not being concrete enough to justify more targeted antibiotics. It's a rather indiscriminate killer of bacteria. It will flush both helpful and harmful bacteria from your colon and that's the one place where there is good evidence suggesting that taking probiotics is helpful. Further, with the lack of evidence sugg

That's the theory, but it's a theory established back when we thought all microbes were bad, or at best harmless. Now they're re-evalutating the theory to see if perhaps it's not actually counterproductive.

The thing is those pathogens are going to get on your skin again almost immediately after washing anyway (think of everything you touch both before and after bathing), and if you've washed away the beneficial bacteria then the more virulent ones can recolonize your skin virtually unopposed. Meanwhile all your traditional symbiotes have been washed away, so you're not getting their benefits either. Could be a recipe to make people considerably more vulnerable to infection than otherwise.

It's about amount and growth. Anthrax is on everything; you can refine anthrax from the soil in your back yard. Straight white powder anthrax will cause severe health impacts, even though you're constantly touching and inhaling anthrax.

Yes, of course. I don't use shampoo, but I do use soap. I also use a comb to clean my hair, and I scrub the scalp. Sebum production diminishes when I do this, but I have to be thorough: miss cleaning behind your ears and you'll have a rotting, putrid landfill smell coming off your head. If you do get everywhere, your hair smells like... hair... the way it would if you used raw detergent to clean it, but with the feeling of soft puppy fur.

I ask myself if the showers that kill the flora is just water or use soap.Shampoo is something I long ago stopped using and after a short period I stopped producing excessive amounts of oil. The only times I have to shampoo is when because of a skin condition.

Using soap in general isn't something I feel is needed since a regular rinsing leaves me non smelly.

Question is if I am actually breeding these little microbes and my lack of soaping is why I don't smell or if it's simply because I'm not a smelly person as some of my friends and family asserts?

Or you've just stopped noticing the smell, which is the worrying theory.

I've actually stopped shampooing as well, though I also have to keep my hair buzzed short. It's the only thing I've found to reduce the oil and irritation. I'm far too aware of BO to stop using soap, though...

Using soap in general isn't something I feel is needed since a regular rinsing leaves me non smelly.

According to your nose you may be non-smelly. Perhaps you're like a coworker of mine that could not smell BO. He didn't think he needed to wash regularly or use deodorant since he couldn't smell himself. Being an avid runner, he STANK most of the time; I mean he reeked to the point of making people's eyes water.

You really don't want to be 'that guy'. You might want to get a second opinion from an unbiased source (not "friends and family").

Question is if I am actually breeding these little microbes and my lack of soaping is why I don't smell or if it's simply because I'm not a smelly person as some of my friends and family asserts?

Smelly is relative term.Are your relatives are smelly?

But seriously, I think a lot of folks don't soap their entire bodies when they shower. I just hit the critical spots in a normal shower. Full soaping only happens before a long flight or after doing something significantly dirty. Shampoo once a week at most, keeps my scalp from drying up.

I found that getting the water as hot as I could stand before rinsing out my hair seems to help rinse out excessive oil buildup. I tend to shampoo two to three times a week instead of daily, and I've noticed that when I do this with the hot water my hair looks better than when I use cooler water.

IIRC from the book "The Life That Lives On Man," the skin count of undesirable bacteria is maximized by daily showering. That's just frequent enough to wash away the desirable strains, and to keep things moist enough for the undesirable strains to proliferate. That research is over 20 years old, so I'd love to see an update.

I've gone 10 days without washing (other than water), on a wilderness backpacking trip. Despite the fact that I was sweating a lot every day, at the end of the expedition I didn't feel as "dirty" as I would've expected. I think we could find a happy medium between our modern antibacterial-soap fetish and ye olde annual bath.

I went 2 months without showering, when I was working in the Arctic, living in a tent, etc. A snow shower at -40c didn't seem appealing.

Then my flight out was delayed by weather. I lost the shower day I was going to have between flights.

So took the bush plane out the next day and ran for my next flight. New sweat to freshen up 2 months of stench. After take off, everyone moved to the front of the plane and the flight attendant discreetly sprayed the entire now-empty-except-for-me rear cabin with air freshe

At first I was stinky and greasy. Later I was just greasy. But hey, I've got greasy skin. So I went back to product, because I didn't want to be greasy. But I have hippie shampoo and soap, no patchouli involved — unscented shampoo, and peppermint soap. No deodorant, I smell at least as good now as I did when I used it in conjunction with a bunch of toxic crap.

Have you ever walked into a hobby store on a Saturday with gaming tables set up? Fucking unwashed pigs.

The real problem often ain't the gamers themselves, but their laundry habits or lack thereof. If you're gonna work around the house, sure, put on yesterday's pants. If you're going to sit right next to someone else, put on a full set of clean clothes, you goddamned savages. And, you know, actually do your laundry.

I believe in taking care of myself and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.

Of course, you're quoting to opening narration from the American Psycho movie. But if you think about the described routine, it doesn't really make sense. He first applies an ice pack (which does, indeed, reduce puffiness), and then a pore cleanser. I thought everyone knew that cold constricts pores. That's why at some spas when you get a facial they start with warm steam. This opens up your pores, and the cleaning works better. Another problem with the routine described in the movie is daily exfoliation of

Was the reduction of body stench independently verified? Maybe she just got used to it.

Absolutely possible. This is just her anecdotal report. She has other anecdotal reports in TFA, though:

Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company's board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin's bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being "unclean" in either the visual or olfactory sense.

And, honestly, it makes some sense on an intuitive level. Perspiration doesn't really have an odor on its own -- the odor comes with the bacteria and such that start growing in the minutes and hours after perspiration.

If we get rid of all of them every day, we're going to select for certain strains of fast-growing bacteria.

If we instead let things "ferment" over weeks or months, we'll probably select for other types of bacteria, which tend to be adapted to our bodies, rather than whatever random fast-growing stuff happens to land there after a daily shower. Undoubtedly, the odors produced with a hygiene regimen change will be DIFFERENT.

And, since soap and daily showers are a relatively recent invention, one would think that humans would be less likely to find the build-up of long-term bacterial colony odors offensive, since from an evolutionary perspective, natural body odor shouldn't drive potential mates away. And it's therefore more likely that we'd be adapted to not care about such odors (of even sometimes be attracted to them -- historically, we have lots of accounts of people who describe natural body odor as a significant aphrodisiac).

I'm not saying all of this is true. But it at least makes sense that a DIFFERENCE in body odor seems likely when bacterial colonies are allowed to establish themselves over time and be selected for in daily body excretions.

Kind of like trying to create a sourdough starter: if you just mix together flour and water and let it sit for a few days, you have a high likelihood of mold or undesirable things forming over time. If you just empty the container, scrub it out, and try again, you're likely to have similar results. But if you let it sit over a period of weeks and gradually feed it, eventually you'll select for specific bacteria and yeasts. And after a while, you end up with robust bacterial colonies that won't likely mold or grow nasty stuff -- because the microorganisms create an environment conductive to their own growth, rather than the undesirable stuff.